This paper addresses how political parties make decisions. Parties often have to choose between conflicting objectives such as influence on policy, control of the government, and support among the voters. This paper examines the behavior of the two Swedish parties on one of their particular policy positions: Swedish withdrawal from the EU. The aim is to describe why the Left Party (Vänsterpartiet) and the Green Party (Miljöpartiet) retain thisspecific policy position when it on one hand seems damaging to their chances of getting into government, and on the other seems to be an unrealistic policy to realize. I undertake a twocase study of the two Swedish parties, which I assume to represent a population of Nordic parties critical to the EU.

The main purpose of this study was that, in the light of theories of how street level bureaucrats may affect the implementation of political decisions, examine and analyze the social workers interpretations of the child perspective's impact on the handling of social assistance, and what opportunities and/or limitations they feel that the organizational preconditions means for the application. The survey had a qualitative research approach and consisted of eight thematic interviews with a total of ten respondents operating in five different municipalities. Eight of the respondents were social workers dealing directly with social assitance and two had managerial positions. The results of the interviews were then analyzed with the help of an actor-structure approach to implementation and Michael Lipskys theory of street-level bureaucrats and their role as policy makers. The results of the survey showed that the respondents had relatively similar views on the child perspectives implications for work with social assistance.

The economic policy of the Swedish Social Democrats has undergone major changes during the last thirty years. From using a so-called Keynesian policy to promote full employment in the economy, the Social Democrats have switched to a more monetaristic policy to promote low inflation instead. What I intend to do with this study is to see if the policy change also can be noticed in how the party describe their own policy. Have the Social Democrats been open and transparent with their change in priorities, or have they tried to hide this in their rhetoric?The purpose of this thesis is to examine if one can notice a change from a Keynesian to a monetaristic policy in the Social Democrat?s descriptions of their economic policy.

The following study is dedicated to investigate what kind of problems an organisation might stumble upon in the process of implementing a policy related to information security. Alongside investigating the eventual problems occurring in the implementation process of an organisation, the study also sets out to analyse how an organisation can motivate staff in order to follow the guidelines of a policy. The collection of empirical data was done using interviews. In order to seek answers to our research questions a theoretical background is presented that illustrate the need for information security after which motivational theories are applied to our collected data.To summarise the results of the study we find a gap of knowledge between the employees of the organisation. The organisational level of an employee together with the degree of participation in working with a policy seems connected to both the employee?s knowledge of a policy as well as how well the employee are motivated to learn about and follow the guidelines provided from a policy..

In the social sciences, geopolitical theory is used in order to analyze states actions and commitments when it comes to foreign policy. This thesis develops a new understanding of geopolitical theory. Firstly, the development and application of geopolitical theory, from its foundations in the early twentieth century to contemporary geopolitical studies is discussed. Secondly a revised understanding of the variables integrated in the concept and how it can be operationalized as an analytical tool is presented and tested empirically.The critical assessment of the research field of geopolitical theory tells us that six different geopolitical perspectives have been considered the most influential (room, strategy, power projection, identity, affiliation and governance) when it comes to analyzing state action. This model is applied as an analytical tool and thus tested on a single case.

This study is set out to examine if there is any kind of influence between the EU and Swedish gender policy. More specific the Swedish efforts within the gender policy area, especially in the area of social policy and employment, during the Swedish presidency in the Council of Ministers 2001. And also to examine the impact of Europeanization in Swedish gender policy. We have decided to delimit our study to care of elderly and children when it comes to the area of social policy. We are using a descriptive, examining qualitative method.

The overall aim of this study is to investigate how social workers who are dealing with financial assistance are experiencing discretion in their daily work. The aim of the study is also to examine how social workers who are dealing with financial assistance relates to the controlling and the supporting functions of their daily work and how this in turn affects the attitude to the client. In order to examine the aim of the study, qualitative method was used. Eight social workers have been interviewed and presented with two fictitious cases that they have been able to discuss. Theories regarding the street-level bureaucrat and its discretion have been used to interpret and understand the collected material.

The current debate regarding organizational strategies for sustainabledevelopment is influenced by the theory of global governance. Decentralizedstructures of the global society are taken to use in the realization of a sustainabledevelopment. New roles of transnational networks and partnerships raisesquestions of the ability of global governance to co-ordinate and implement longtermsolutions without assistance from centralized and hierarchic structures basedon government. The aim for this thesis is to illustrate the current conditions forwell-functioning networks of sustainable development and examine therelationship between global governance and government. Issues of participation,decision making and compliance are examined by a case study of the Marrakechprocess, a global process to support the implementation of sustainableconsumption and production.

This paper is about the use of task boards in agile system development projects. The main focus is on how digitalized versions of the task board can be of assistance during the development process. Our investigation is based on qualitative studies, with system developers of various backgrounds and professional roles, along with studies of relevant literature. The main results are that a digitized version of the task board can increase awareness for the team and be of major importance if it is accessible through the web. On the other hand negative effects of the digitalization can emerge as well.

Denna uppsats belyser vilka frågor som lyftes fram för några kommuners framtidsarbete, vilka aktörerna var i de policyskapande processerna samt visar varför dessa framtidsvisioner fördes upp på dagordningen på 1990-talet. Metoden för studien är en jämförande, kvalitativ fåfallsstudie av kommunernas framtidsprogram. De utvalda kommunerna är Gävle, Halmstad, Karlskrona, Karlstad, Kristianstad och Luleå. Uppsatsens analysbegrepp är Policy Windows och Policy Networks. Dessa innefattas i en korporativ och elitistisk statsteori.

This essay deals with the question of lines of development within the politics in the rural municipality of Nyed 1950-1962. The aim is to explore how local politics and policies were handled from two perspectives. Firstly the issue of conflict and consensus or majority rule and consensus. Here Arend Lijphard's theory of majority and consensus provides a theoretical base for the essay. Secondly the aim is to explore the actions of the local politicians with regards to leisure time policies to find out whether or not they ideologically belonged to the concept of ?folkhemmets kommun? by Ulla Ekström von Essen.The source material for this essay has been the minutes from the two major bodies of local politics in Nyed, kommunalfullmäktige and kommunalnämnden.

The aim of this paper is to empirically examine the ideological trends and positioning of the Swedish liberal party with the Danish social liberal party. This paper also aims to analyze the reasons behind the trends. By examine the development in these two Nordic liberal sisterparties, this paper contributes to our understanding of why and how party change is initiated. The paper commences with an intuitive notion that the Swedish party has in fact, made a lurch towards the right, during the past ten to fifteen years while the Danish party has retained their social-liberal position in the centre of the Danish political spectrum. The questions then asked are: can this hypothesis be verified empirically? If so, how can this phenomenon of divergence, be explained?The method used in this thesis is process-tracing and the empirical material does to a large extent rely on interviews with central agents as they are specified in the theory of each party.

This dissertation deals with two sports clubs and their operational development between the years 1946-1998. The research was made by a qualitative analysis of the annual reports and protocols that the clubs produced between 1946-1998. The two clubs are IFK Växjö and Växjö BK which are located in Växjö in Sweden. Our main purpose with this study was to analyze the operational development and in which way elitist drive affects the voluntary society content and culture. Results indicated that if a sports club starts with elitist sport it could have a bad impact on the voluntary sector.

This bachelor thesis explores the conditions for a harmonized EU gender equality policy. Recently the maternity leave directive has been introduced by the European commission and seeks to improve the conditions for pregnant workers. The controversial subject of this maternity leave has illustrated many of the problems connected to the development of a social dimension in EU. First of all, the debate concerning the maternity leave directive in the European Parliament has shown that both sides in the parliament seem positive towards creating legislation in this matter on EU level. However, parties at the right tend to disagree to many of the amendments in the proposal, such as the maximum entitlement.

According to Swedish school policy documents, every teacher?s assignment is to individually adapt the education to meet every student?s needs. There are no exact guidelines about how to make these adaptations. The purpose of this study is to investigate how six teachers interpret the policy documents and how they, according to themselves, work to achieve this. This study is built on six interviews with teachers who work with children in the ages from seven to ten.